We recently published a larger version of our classic “Super Researcher” minizine full of tips for planning a successful research visit to an archives. This zine was originally created in 2016 as a lighthearted approach to exploring the world of primary source research. At the Rubenstein Library, about half of our reading room visitors are undergraduate students, and we recognize that even seasoned scholars may need help navigating our particular practices. This pocket-size guide has been distributed to hundreds of students and other library users at Duke and across many other institutions. We are happy to share this new edition with larger print, updated content, and most importantly, more clip art!
Stop by our reading room to pick up a copy, or you can download printable PDF versions of the original mini-zine (prints on 8.5×11 in. paper) and new quarter-size zine (prints on 11×17 in. paper). The Publisher versions of the files are also available in case you want to adapt them for your own institution. These publications are created by Kelly Wooten and licensed for sharing through Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
Contributed by Annie Sansonetti, Ph. D. candidate, Department of Performance Studies, New York University; Recipient of an Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Research Travel Grant, 2022-23, supported by the Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Foundation.
There is a photograph of my best friend and I as children that I especially love. The year is 2002. In the photo, I am in her “girl” clothes and she is in my “boy” clothes. We pose, my hand on my hip, her arm by her side. We smile with our other arms around each other. I remember our debut in her big, sun-filled kitchen: coffee and pastries on the table and the surprise on our parents’ faces. Laughter ensued, someone took a photo, and we played in our shared clothing all day. I assume that I eventually swapped her clothes for mine, although this moment does not stand out in my mind. The memory of my friend’s roomy walk-in closet and our subsequent exit of it—down the spiral staircase hand in hand, with our footsteps set to a symphony of our giggles—does.
I call this moment, and the gendered and (trans)sexual activity that transpired there, “Eve’s closet.” Play in Eve’s closet is my descriptor for queer and trans pleasure in the curvature of sexual and gendered spaces, what Sedgwick described in a response to an essay by Jacob Hale as an “identification with what is, at any given moment, understood to be the growing edge of a self.” It recalls moments of childhood play—“of daring surmise and cognitive rupture”—between queer and trans kids (here trans feminine and trans masculine), where clothing, make-believe, and toys are the “very stuff” of queer sexuality and/or where friendship is a medium for gender transition or sex change. Eve’s closet is a funhouse for kids: comprised of many entrances and exits, where they are encouraged to come in and come out when they are ready. It is like a theatre’s backstage, or a dressing room, where costume choices are endless. In Eve’s closet, and in play among children, even bridal lingerie has queer and trans potential.
Eve Sedgwick poses in front of a shop called Eve’s Closet, Greenwich Village, NY, undated. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Papers, Box 16.
I visited the Eve Kosofksy Sedgwick papers at Duke University’s Rubenstein Library with an interest in Sedgwick’s writing on trans feminine childhood—what was then-called “feminine boyhood,” “boyhood effeminacy,” or “boyhood femininity” in common parlance of queer theory in the 1990s. I am interested in how stories of trans feminine childhood—of feminine boyhood and trans girlhood—have been written and performed in theatre and the performing arts, especially when friends (or other queer- and trans-loving collaborators) are the chosen or desired audience members or co-stars. I read an early 1989 draft of her now-famous essay “How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay,” later re-published in Tendencies in 1993 with the subtitle “The War on Effeminate Boys,” as well as her lesser-known 1989 essay “Willa Cather and Others” on Cather’s 1905 short story titled “Paul’s Case: A Study in Temperament.” But I soon became fascinated by Sedgwick’s collaborations with her best friend and once-roommate Michael Moon, especially their co-authored 1990 essay, more of a “performance piece,” on the topic of “divinity,” what they called “a little-understood emotion.”
In “Divinity,” Moon and Sedgwick reflect on the “roominess” of the fat woman’s body—and her closet—for the feminine boy. While I am interested in the content of the essay (especially a film still of Divine and the “Infant of Prague” from John Waters’ 1970 film Multiple Maniacs, and I certainly have my own stories of play in fat women’s closets as a girly-boy), for the purposes of this report, I want to dwell on Moon and Sedgwick’s collaboration for what it teaches us about the pleasure and play of the trans masculine and trans feminine relation. In Sedgwick’s papers, there are multiple drafts of “Divinity”—some with misplaced paragraphs, others with Moon’s and Sedgwick’s marginalia, and a few with Moon’s initials swapped for Sedgwick’s and vice versa, as if they were sharing and exchanging each other’s voices, or playing dress up with each other’s bodies, if you will.
Moon and Sedgwick both spent time in the closet. Moon as a “proto-gay,” feminine boy and Sedgwick as a fat woman who accompanied them there (and who was, especially in her white glasses, a fat woman who was a gay man). But they also stepped outside them quite proudly and defiantly, both together and apart, like me and my friend. For Moon and Sedgwick, their play-space was writing; for my friend and I, it was clothing. Inspired by Moon and Sedgwick’s essay and my photograph, we might make the claim that queer and trans children’s play with each other (both “actual” children and the inner child of the queer or trans adult who is “co-present,” not gone, after Mary Zaborskis) can constitute felt and pleasurable enactments of queer sexuality and/or gender transition beyond the confine of an “adult”—legal, medical, and political—form of legibility and between friends.
Play in each other’s shared clothing is co-authorship. It a chance for queer and trans kids to stage the bodies and lives they want for themselves and their friends, at least for the time being, and until they have the autonomy to demand more from the world at the level of sexual and gender-determination in an adult-centric world. In extant queer and trans scholarship and popular culture, tomboys and sissies are often staged far apart from each other. But what about their conviviality and solidarity—the “I have what you need/want, you have what I need/want” kind of mutual aid? Think: my photograph. It occurs to me that in our play, a repertoire that was certainly “t4t,” we relished the share of clothing, bodies (body parts?), and toys that sustained our queer and trans childhood—little-by-little, day-by-day, and moment-by-moment, like the best scenes of queer and trans childhood’s “divinity.”
In this sense, play among queer and trans children is best encapsulated in Sedgwick’s last words on the “divine” collaboration between Divine and Waters (and, I add, herself and Moon, and me and my friend). This play, is, as Sedgwick writes, “as scarce as it is precious.” It offers us “opulent images and daring performances that suggest the experiment of desires that might withstand the possibility of their fulfillment.” In the absence of a certain fulfillment, there is no “finale” to such play’s enactment of desire. Instead, there are only a bunch of opulent and daring debuts with the friends who withstand the often frustrated, unrealizable experiments in queer and trans desire with you. This is “Eve’s closet,” where children can change their genders/sexualities, stage a scene, and strike a pose with a friend, always as if for the first time. There may even be someone queer- and trans-loving around to photograph it.
Post contributed by Joshua Larkin Rowley, Reference Archivist, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History.
The January 1962 issue of Consumer Reports, the flagship publication of the consumer education and advocacy non-profit of the same name, included a much-anticipated article titled “The Fallout Shelter: A review of the facts of nuclear life and the variables that bear on the effectiveness of a shelter.” Cold War consumers were eager for guidance from a trusted source of product evaluation. However, Consumer Reports essentially took a pass. According to the organization, all the variables that might make a shelter effective or ineffective were simply unknowable and unpredictable. While the organization side-stepped recommending specific shelters, the Technical Department, the unit responsible for creating testing procedures, methods, and reports, retained forwarded letters documenting reader reactions to the article. For a moment, the fallout shelter article became a flashpoint for the hopes, fears, and anxieties of Cold War citizens.
Consumer Reports cover, January 1962
Some readers applauded the article as the most objective and thorough review of the facts regarding the effectiveness of fallout shelters. Others were not so complimentary. A professor of architecture at the University of Florida and self-described instructor in “Fallout Shelter Analysis,” accused the organization of using the same tactics as cigarette advertisers, “arguing from a conclusion using pseudo-technical jargon.”[1] Another agreed that Consumer Reports had not “..lived up to its own standards in discharging the awesome responsibility…of giving advice that might mean life or death to large numbers of people.”[2] Some took an optimistic something-is-better-than-nothing stance. “You apparently cannot admit that a partial solution is better than no solution at all,” wrote one subscriber.[3] Yet another reader relays that he is often asked by friends and acquaintances whether he is afraid that the shelter he is currently constructing might not work. His reply, he shares, is always: “No—My greatest fear has been that it (nuclear war) might happen, and I would be faced with the knowledge that I hadn’t even tried or made the effort.”[4]
Other readers felt the article reinforced their own principled stance concerning nuclear armament. A letter from a couple from Bellaire, Ohio included their own vision of Civil Defense titled Civilization Defense: A Creed, in which they lay out a list of principled teachings that they plan to instill in their children amid the omnipresent threat of nuclear war which concludes: “This creed is the only shelter I will build for my children.”[5] A research psychologist at the University of Michigan argued that the greatest threat posed by the fallout shelter fad was not their inadequacy, but their “psychological and political consequences during a time when an attack might still be prevented.” He goes on to argue that shelter programs are but “a step in the long chain of events” that could actually provoke a nuclear war. Lynn and Michael Phillips of Berkley, CA, agreed, commending the article’s importance in “preventing people from making the deadly mistake of accepting nuclear war” as a means to rid the world of Communism and survive. In the mind of the Phillips’s the only way to protect a nation’s people from nuclear war was disarmament.
Civilization Defense: A Creed, 1962
Consumer Reports was also critical of companies eager to leverage the demand for fallout shelters. In an article titled “Enter the Survival Merchants,” the magazine characterized the “survival business” as a natural home for “fly-by-night operators, high pressure salesman, and home improvement racketeers” and accused the industry of preying on people’s fear as well as their patriotism. A letter from an executive at KGS Associates, later to be revealed as a civil defense merchandiser, accused the publication of intentionally setting out to discredit the civil defense industry. In the case of a nuclear attack, the writer wondered “how fast the Consumer Reports staff…will run for the shelters, eat the food, and drink the water provided by the men they have described as hungry, callous, and even a bit shady.” Another shelter defender pointedly stated, “your implication that all shelter designers are out to fleece the public is untrue and not up to the high standards I have always looked for in Consumer Reports.”[6] The organization did not let large corporations off the hook either. General Mills, the processed foods manufacturer, also came under fire for their marketing of Multi-Purpose Food (MPF), a shelf-stable nutritional supplement designed specifically to stock fallout shelters and meant to be mixed with other foods. Brochures for the product were often displayed alongside fallout shelters at civil defense trade shows, piggybacking on the shelter craze.
Multi-Purpose Food brochure, General Mills, September 1961.
Looking back on the controversial issue two years removed from its publication, Consumer Reports staff took time for an LOL moment. In an internal memo, a staff member noted an article published in the New York Post that day about fallout shelters that cited a local company “…buying up prefabricated fallout shelters for conversion to hot dog stands and cabanas. ‘Swords into plowshares’” he quipped.[7]
[1] King Royer to Consumers Union, 12 January 1962. Consumer Reports. Technical Department Records, Box 54
[2] Jack Hirshleifer to Irving Michelson, Director of Public Service Projects, 15 March 1962, Ibid.
[3] John F. Devaney to Dexter Masters, Director, Consumers Union, 11 January 1962 Ibid.
[4] Thomas McHugh to Consumer Reports, 8 April 1962. Consumer Reports. Technical Department Records, Box 54.
[5] Charlotte Levine to Consumer Reports, 14 January 1962, Consumer Reports. Technical Department Records, Box 54.
Post contributed by Zachary Tumlin, Project Archivist for the Economists’ Papers Archive.
Raymond Battalio (1938-2004) and John Van Huyck (1956-2014) were American academic economists who spent their entire careers at Texas A&M University (TAMU; 1969-2004 and 1985-2014, respectively), where they contributed to the development of experimental economics. Battalio was one of the 12 founders of the Economic Science Association in 1986 and served as its third president, and together, they founded the Economic Research Lab at TAMU in 1997. They are primarily known for their lab work on the problem of multiple equilibria in game theory. Along with Richard Biel, they carried out a series of experiments on coordination that began with the minimum-effort coordination game in 1990. They helped explain why players will fail to coordinate even when it is in their best interest to do so, and they showed the importance of learning because player behavior will change over time.
Figure 1: The Electronic Research Lab in 2004 (photo by Van Huyck) versus 2021 (from the ERL Twitter account). Dividers ensure that participants cannot easily screen peek, and their computers are networked together and controlled by a separate computer at the front of the room.
Dr. Jonathan Cogliano, former Project Archivist, began processing their papers (combined into one collection due to their close working relationship) in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic and leaving to become an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Boston in summer 2020. Undergraduate Elizabeth Berenguer imaged and reported on 442 floppy disks during the fall 2022 semester, and Project Archivist Zachary Tumlin finished processing the electronic records in June 2023.
Figure 2: Boxes 66-81 of the collection.
There are 65 boxes with 81 linear feet of paper records and 16 boxes with 1,568 electronic record carriers and 43 pieces of audiovisual material. This breaks down as 1,309 floppy disks (both 3.5” and 5.25”), 245 optical disks (CDs and DVDs), nine hard drives (internal and external), five quarter-inch cartridges, three USB thumb drives, 29 audio cassettes, and 14 microcassettes. Some of these disks were separated from related paper records, while others were not. This is the greatest number of electronic record carriers in an archival collection at Duke, and most or all belonged to Van Huyck. Interested in and knowledgeable about the use of technology, he maintained backups and migrated files to newer storage mediums to prevent data loss, or to transport files between his home and office before he would later use Dropbox.
Figure 3: Van Huyck taught his children how to program in the Logo language using Turtle’s Discovery Book, written by Jim Muller and illustrated by C. Micha in 1995.
These carriers contain approximately 1.5 million files that total 655 gigabytes, with the hard drives being the largest source. This material was appraised down to 390,864 files that total 56.2 gigabytes and arranged into ten sets (top-level folders) based on the arrangement of the paper records. There are three main reasons for this reduction: 1) some disks are clearly labeled as copies of other disks, 2) some disks are installation disks for software, and 3) the hard drives contain system files that are never retained, and they show an evolution over time due to being used as backups. However, duplicate files remain, especially between different mediums. Seven of these sets are now open for research but three have restricted access due to the presence of personnel records or personally identifiable information.
Figure 4: RL11714-FL3-0744 contains a demo of a Bayesian learning experiment that can be played by an individual against a simulated opponent. It appears to be from the Economic Science Laboratory at the University of Arizona in the early 1990s.
Figure 5: These screenshots, stored on different disks, show two different experiments and operating systems; the first is in DOS and the second is in Windows and on unstructured bargaining.
Post contributed by Vincent Carret, Part-time Research Scholar for the Economists’ Papers Archive and Visiting Scholar at the Center for the History of Political Economy.
The Randall Hinshaw papers have been reprocessed, and four new boxes have been added. The collection is now fully described, and open for research. This blog post describes what is in the papers, by going over the life and work of Randall Hinshaw.
Randall Weston Hinshaw was born on May 9, 1915, in La Grange, Illinois. His father, Virgil Goodman Hinshaw, was chairman of the Prohibition Party National Committee (1912-1924) and a longtime advocate of the temperance movement (transcripts of his diaries in the collection document his advocacy at the turn of the century). Virgil and his family moved to Southern California in the mid-1920s, and Randall grew up in Pasadena with his five brothers. He attended Occidental College during the 1930s, graduating with a BA (1937) and MA (1939); he went on to Princeton University, where he obtained a PhD in economics (1944) after a lecturing stint at Harvard University in 1942-1943.
Hinshaw’s BA and MA diplomas.
In the 1940s, Hinshaw worked at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, in the Division of Research and Statistics. A number of memoranda and unpublished manuscripts from this time can be found in the collection, including some co-authored with Lloyd A. Metzler and other economists. He then joined the successor agency working on implementing the Marshall Plan in Europe, and was stationed in Paris for a few years, during which he was involved in the intergovernmental negotiations on international payments, economic cooperation, and regional monetary agreements.
A report by Hinshaw and Lloyd Metzler.
At the end of the 1950s, Hinshaw left government service and returned to academia in the US. After short-term visiting positions at Yale University, Oberlin College, and the Council on Foreign Relations, he secured a position in 1960 at the newly founded Claremont Graduate School, where he remained until his death in 1997, becoming a professor emeritus in 1982.
Hinshaw (left) with colleagues from the Claremont Graduate School’s Circle of Associates.
Hinshaw was well-connected with many leading economists in international trade through his education and through his role in the federal government. His association with the Bologna Center of Johns Hopkins University led to the organization of the first Bologna Claremont Monetary Conference in 1967. This conference brought together economists from academia, government, and the private sector to discuss the problems and evolution of the international monetary system.
Several boxes contain the correspondence related to the organization of the Bologna Claremont Monetary Conferences, which continued until Hinshaw’s death in 1997 . Among the economists who took part in the debates were Paul Samuelson, Robert Solow, Milton Friedman, Lionel Robbins, James Tobin, Jacques Rueff, Robert Triffin, and many others. Three boxes of audiocassettes and two boxes of reel-to-reel tapes contain audio recordings of most of these conferences, along with audio letters sent to Hinshaw by his family and colleagues.
Audiovisual material in the collection.
This collection will be of interest to those researching the international monetary system from the 1940s to the 1990s, from the point of view of both government experts and academics. Although the conference proceedings have been published, the correspondence on their organization documents what happened behind the scenes. Some dramatic moments surface from these letters, for instance the London School of Economics protests in the late 1960s, which prevented Robbins from attending one of the conferences; other tensions between the participants illustrate the saying that academic rivalries are only as vicious as the stakes are small.
Post contributed by Laura Daly, Marshall T. Meyer Human Rights Archive Intern, 2022-2023
Hi there! My name is Laura Daly and I’m the Marshall T. Meyer Human Rights archive intern at Duke and recent MLIS graduate of the University of Alabama. I’m excited to share with you my experience processing the Carolina Justice Policy Center (CJPC) records, a criminal justice organization which existed in Durham from 1975-2019.
This collection is a treasure trove of information for those interested in criminal justice and human rights. With only a small staff, CJPC accomplished significant change in North Carolina by improving prison conditions, sentencing for juveniles and people with mental disabilities, alternatives to incarceration, substance abuse rehabilitation, violence prevention, racial injustice, and bringing about a moratorium on the death penalty.
A photo taken in the 1980s by the Carolina Justice Policy Center Staff for a holiday greeting card which would be sent to people in prison as part of the Prisons and Jails Project.
CJPC also maintained personal correspondence with incarcerated people on death row and their attorneys to advocate for commutation of their sentences, including Velma Barfield who was the first woman executed in North Carolina since 1944.
Rally of the North Carolinians Against the Death Penalty—an organization which worked closely with and was administrated by the Carolina Justice Policy center for a period of time.An unprocessed shipping box containing the files of the Carolina Justice Policy Center.
On my first day at Smith Warehouse, I was welcomed by my wonderful supervisors, Paula Jeannet and Patrick Stawski, followed by the paralyzing sight of the 112 shipping boxes stuffed full of folders, papers, and binders of the Carolina Justice Policy Center records. With limited background information about the collection, I began by taking an inventory of all the materials and coming up with a topical roadmap.
Taking note of things like formats, inscriptions on boxes, and the types of filing systems that were used helped me to get a sense of their original function and organization so that I could maintain the integrity of the collection as much as possible. Some aspects of the physical processing included stamping folders, pulling materials out of binders, removing rusty paperclips, unfolding and rehousing oversized and brittle materials, and making copies of fading documents printed on thermal paper. We finally entered all the folder titles into a spreadsheet and included descriptions of the series’ for the finding aid that would enable researchers to browse the collection in the catalog.
As is often the case with archival work, you never know what you will find hidden in boxes. Possibly the most memorable artifact I uncovered was a square cloth napkin which had been beautifully painted by someone in prison and sent to the director of CJPC, Lao Rubert. For me, this token of gratitude encapsulates the work of CJPC, whose mission was to advocate for those who were regarded as less than human by society to ensure that they received every legal affordance and resource they were entitled to.
Artwork painted on a cloth napkin was sent as a gift by an incarcerated person to the Carolina Justice Policy Center as an expression of appreciation and friendship.
Another significant item was a statement of solidarity written and signed by incarcerated people on death row which denounces the hypocrisy of capital punishment and pleads for the human right to exist.
Letter of Solidarity written by incarcerated people on death row in the early 1980s.
While I knew that a significant portion of the collection would deal with crime and violence, I was somewhat unprepared for the challenge of becoming so intimately acquainted with these types of materials over a long period of time. I feel it’s important to note that a collection whose materials revolve around experiences of imprisonment, human rights abuse, trauma, and violence can be emotionally challenging to engage with for both archivists and researchers. Taking breaks when feeling overwhelmed, sharing with a trusted person or supervisor thoughts or feelings about difficult material you have encountered, or even listening to uplifting music can help. The exceptional staff I worked with at Duke were careful to periodically check in to make sure my needs were being met and that I felt okay handling the materials.
In retrospect, I learned many skills from this experience that I believe will be important for my future career in archives. For example, I had to consider the ethical ramifications of including materials about people in the archive while still protecting sensitive information–particularly for incarcerated people who are still living. Another important lesson I learned is that processing a collection requires you to continually make decisions about how to allocate time efficiently and devise workflows that will enable you to complete a project in the agreed upon timeframe. There is no one-size-fits-all approach and creating a unique processing plan is essential for each collection to maximize its accessibility for research, maintain its integrity, and respect the voices and perspectives of those being represented in the record.
In addition to processing the collection, I also gained a greater appreciation for the tireless work of the individuals who advocate for positive change in the criminal justice system and within our communities.
Post contributed by Michelle Wolfson, the 2022-2023 Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Intern.
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am currently studying library science at East Carolina University. I started the program after realizing both of my children would be in school, in-person (the youngest did kindergarten virtually!), and I could get back to work. I enjoyed being a homemaker for nearly a decade; my children are 10 and 8 years old. Instead of returning completely to work, I decided that I did not want my children to one day say about me, “She really wanted to be a librarian but she never did it,” and so I started at ECU’s online, asynchronous program. I currently work part-time at a public library, as well as here at Duke, and it has been so exciting for me to experience both public and academic librarianship, to see how they differ and overlap. At the public library, I work on the youth services side. I have worked for nearly a year to have our public library system become the first in North Carolina to be sensory inclusive certified and have created a sensory room at one of our branches.
What do you finding interesting about working in libraries, and specifically, the History of Medicine Collections?
What I find most interesting about working in libraries is that everybody is on their own learning journey, and I am thrilled when I can be a part of that or helpful in any way. Working with the History of Medicine Collections is especially exciting because whether I am working with medical students or other students, health and medicine affects all of us, and everybody can find something that is relevant and interesting. Regarding the materials, I most like seeing the ways that people from the past got things right or got things extremely wrong (but you can also see why they thought the way that they did). It makes you appreciate that we’re all in this together, trying to muddle our way through, learning and growing from those before us.
What is a memorable experience from your internship?
There have been so many memorable experiences! I really enjoyed when the family and friends of Dr. Richard Payne came into Rubenstein Library to look over some of his things that are part of the Richard Payne papers 1980-2020. There was so much joy and so many stories everybody shared about Dr. Payne that were sparked when they viewed the collection. And they were excited to hear about how his papers would be used to help educate students, future doctors, and scholars. I also enjoyed being able to introduce primary sources to students in Dr. Seth LeJacq’s Writing 101 class. Seth is a fantastic teacher who also taught me, how to be the kind of thoughtful and purposeful teacher I would like to be when engaging with students. Working with Rachel Ingold, the curator, has also taught me some of the same lessons as Seth – being kind and curious is an invitation to students to learn from you while also teaching you things.
Do you have a favorite item you’d like to share?
I’ve been asked to share a memorable experience and a favorite item! I will share two things. I was asked to look over the Four Seasons for an upcoming digitization project the Digital Production Center (DPC) will be working on in the future. I had the task of counting the flaps to help ensure they are all photographed. I enjoyed that I was able to help a bigger team that will connect more people worldwide to the Four Seasons. It’s a genuinely unique and beautiful item, and who doesn’t love flaps? I also enjoyed seeing the many items that were on display at the annual Anatomy Day. Not only were the items themselves each incredibly interesting, but I also felt great joy at seeing the first-year medical students connect with the items and the history of medicine. So many students immediately flocked to a table that included Japanese medical manuscript notebooks from the early 19th century. These manuscripts include colorful hand-drawn illustrations and are a wonderful example of the advancements medicine can make when ideas are shared globally, as Japanese medical practice at the time was already influenced by Chinese, Portuguese, and Dutch medical practices. The entire event was a gorgeous fusion of medicine and art with examples from Leonardo da Vinci and Vesalius and more, with illustrations in pencil to watercolor, ranging from medicinal plants to anatomical theaters.
Date: Tuesday, June 13, 2023 Time: 4:30pm – 6:30pm Location: Rubenstein Library 153 (Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room) Please RSVP here.
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:
Free parking available at the lower level of the Bryan Center deck. There will be a parking attendant at lower level expecting attendees to this event.
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.
Contributed by Courtney Block, Faculty, Indiana University Southeast Library; 2023-24 Recipient of a Harry H. Harkins T’73 Travel Grant for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History
During my sabbatical in Fall 2022, I travelled to the Rubenstein Library to research items from the Parapsychology Lab Records. Specifically interested in learning more about women in the field’s timeline, I was most eager to find materials pertaining to Rhea A. White (1931-2007), researcher, author, and librarian. As a librarian and author myself, I felt a connection to Rhea. I knew that Rhea worked at the Duke Parapsychology Labs and was a prolific figure who conducted original research, served as editor of the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, and authored several books. What I didn’t know (and was able to access during my time at the archives) is that in the 1950s Rhea wrote nearly 70 pages worth of love letters to her co-researcher Margaret L. Anderson. In these letters, Rhea not only discusses her feelings for Margaret (Marg), but also discusses her near-death experience, dismantles gender binaries, and even reveals that J.B. Rhine once asked her to keep an eye out for certain behavior so that the labs wouldn’t be mired in “scandal.”
My time spent with these letters and the continued research they have set the path for reminds me of a concept that Rhea developed in the 1990s called ‘exceptional human experiences (EHEs).’ Rhea defines EHEs as “a class of spontaneously occurring, unusual experiences.”[i] At the crux of an EHE is its ability to “change the way the experiencer behaves or feels or thinks about [themself], other people, other organisms, and attitudes toward or ideas about the meaning of self, life, death, and other subjects of deep human import that the ordinary person does not have time to ponder deeply, if at all.”[ii] Reading the letters was an exceptional human experience and researching Rhea and Marg’s lives continues to be one as well.
[i] Genie Palmer & William Braud. “Exceptional Human Experiences, Disclosure, and a More Inclusive View of Physical, Psychological, and Spiritual Well-Being.” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 34(1): 2002. 30.
[ii] Rhea A. White. “The Human Component in Exceptional Experience.” Journal of Religion and Psychical Research 20(1): January 1997. 24.
Post contributed by Roger Peña, M.Ed., Research Services Librarian
I’m fightin’ like a lion, Looks like I’m going to lose. ‘Cause there ain’t nobody, ever whipped the T.B. blues
The above lyrics come from the 1931 song, “T.B. Blues” by pioneering country singer, Jimmie Rodgers. They describe a young man accepting his fate and losing the fight against tuberculosis, or TB.
By the 20th century, sheet music had long been a tradition in the music industry as a way for customers to immerse themselves with their favorite songs but also an opportunity for companies to advertise their artists and products. The sheet music for “T.B. Blues’” was published in 1931 by the Southern Music Company – though it was based in New York City. It includes the then standard “Try it on your Piano” introduction page and advertisements for other Jimmie Rodgers songs and that of the Carter Family and band-leader Hoagy Carmichael. The front cover features a portrait of Jimmie Rodgers in his signature suit and straw hat, under a banner with the song title and the curious inclusion of a moonshine bottle, a pair of dice, and the silhouette of a man laying in bed with his chest to his knees, perhaps an allegory to the pain suffered by tuberculosis patients.
Known as the “Singing Brakeman,” a reference to his time working on railroad lines, Rodgers is considered the “father of country music” for his influence across country, rhythm and blues, bluegrass and rock n’ roll. An inductee of the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame and Country Music Hall of Fame, Rodgers is known for such hits as “In the Jailhouse Now,” “Blue Yodel No. 9” (with Louis Armstrong) and “T for Texas,” and has been covered by legendary artists Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Allison Krauss, among others. Tragically, his promising career lasted only six years and was cut short after a long battle with tuberculosis, when he succumbed to the disease in 1933, at the age of 35.
Sheet Music for T.B. Blues (right), including the “Try this over on your piano” intro page.
Got me worried soul, I can’t even sleep at night
I’ve got the T.B. blues
“TB” BACKGROUND
In Jimmie Rodgers’ lifetime, tuberculosis was “one of the two leading causes of death in the early 1900s” and the “dominant chronic infectious disease of the first half of the twentieth century.” Tuberculosis — known also as consumption, phthisis, white plague, and “the robber of youth” throughout history — is caused by the bacteria, mycobacterium tuberculosis.
The earliest written description of TB dates back three millennia to ancient India and in AD 174, the Greek physician Galen described its symptoms as “fever, sweating, coughing and blood stained sputum.” Thought to be hereditary until the late 19th century, German scientist, Robert Koch, discovered that tuberculosis was an airborne infectious bacterial disease that could be transmitted from person to person.
According to a study by Harvard University Library, tuberculosis caused more deaths in industrialized countries than any other disease during the 19th and early 20th centuries. However, a romanticized view of tuberculosis had sprung up in the 1800s as the disease came to be associated with artists and literature. Some believed that suffering from the disease increased creativity, “heightened sensitivity and spiritual purity.” Writer Robert Louis Stevenson suffered from tuberculosis for most of his life and artists such as Emily Bronte, John Keats, and Frederic Chopin all died from the disease at an early age.
Alexander Dumas claimed, “It was the fashion to suffer from the lungs; everybody was consumptive, poets especially; it was good form to spit blood after each emotion that was at all sensational” while Lord Byron quipped that he “should like to die of consumption”.
Yet for many suffering from tuberculosis, the disease could feel like a slow death. Tuberculosis can attack the body in different ways, from the lungs to the kidneys, brain and spine. TB bacteria can settle in the lungs and begin to grow and move through the blood to other parts of the body. Not all who contract tuberculosis become sick leading to the distinction between Latent TB Infection (asymptomatic) and TB Disease (symptomatic).
Like many who suffered from the progressive form of tuberculosis, Rodgers’ battle was prolonged and extremely painful, coughing up bloody sputum for years and suffering from chronic fatigue. At the time of the recording of “T.B. Blues” in 1931, Rodgers had already been living with the disease (the symptomatic TB Disease) for over seven years. He had been diagnosed in 1924 by a family physician after suffering a hemorrhage (Porterfield, p. 53).
When it rained down sorrow, It rained all over me
‘Cause my body rattles, Like a train on that old S.P. [Southern Pacific RR]
Image of the Durham County Jail, circa 1920s. Building and grounds would be converted to TB Sanatorium in 1943 and 1944.
Prior to the innovations of vaccines, medication, and antibiotics that have helped fight tuberculosis, most physicians could only prescribe a nutritious diet, rest and fresh air. In the late 1800s and early 20th century, tuberculosis sanatoriums were established throughout the United States and Europe where TB patients could isolate and rest.
However, relaxation, bedrest, quarantine and sanatorium care weren’t necessarily options for those suffering from poverty. Not working meant not getting paid, and the same was true for Jimmie Rodgers. Particularly for a musician just reaching stardom, taking time from work was not an option. He spent time in sanatoriums and even lived in Asheville, NC for its cooler climate and mountain air; but he continued to perform, even against the recommendations of physicians and family (Porterfield, p.53). Rodgers would on occasion stumble out of bed to perform while fighting a fever and went so far as to tape plaster to his ribs to dull the pain and prevent from breathing too deeply. When he couldn’t stop coughing onstage, fans were known to applaud sympathetically and shout, “Spit ‘er up, Jimmie and sing some more” (Porterfield; p. 115; 279).
Eventually, the disease and its complications would prove too much. Jimmy Rodgers lost his battle with tuberculosis on May 26, 1933. Ever the tireless performer, Rodgers spent his final days recording music in a New York studio, cutting his last record two days before his death.
