A series of big changes consumed the May 5th episode of Mad Men last night, and not everyone is pleased with the results.
Pete, Joan and Bert consult with a banker to take SCDP public. Roger’s scheming gets SCDP a chance to pitch a campaign for a new concept car by Chevrolet. Don resigns the Jaguar account during an angry exchange over dinner with Herb Rennet. Pete and Joan are angry with Don’s actions. Pete and his father-in-law awkwardly run into each other at a brothel, which results in the loss of the Vicks account for SCDP. Megan takes her mother’s advice and gets Don’s attention with a short dress. Peggy is unhappy with the apartment she bought and Abe tries to reassure her. Ted kisses Peggy when she says that she admires him because he is strong. Peggy fantasizes about Ted while she talks to Abe. Don and Ted run into each other at the hotel bar the night before the Chevy pitch and agree to join forces. After winning the account, SCDP and CGC merge. Peggy is surprised and disappointed with the merger news.
Episode six’s plot referred to flight attendants, Mustangs, Shalimar perfume, paint fumes, Vicks cough drops, Jim Beam, and pinot noir, among other things. Here is a selection of ads and images that illustrate some of the products and cultural references mentioned in last night’s Mad Men. A gallery of our highlighted images may also be found on Pinterest and Flickr.
And here’s something to listen to while you’re looking at the ads (especially the last one)!
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project has donated its extensive collection of materials documenting extremist and hate groups in the United States to the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University.
The collection includes nearly 90 boxes of periodicals, pamphlets, flyers and other documents intended for distribution to group members and recruits over the past 30 years.
At the Rubenstein Library, the collection will allow researchers to examine the histories of hate groups and efforts to monitor and infiltrate them adding to the Library’s Human Rights Archive, its rich collections for social movements in the United States, and its large existing collection of materials documenting the Ku Klux Klan from the 1860s to the present day.
The SPLC collection includes materials on many types of extremist groups such as neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separatists, border vigilantes and others.
“We are very excited that Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library has decided to house the extremist materials we’ve been collecting for decades,” said Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project. “We are especially pleased that these relatively rare materials will finally be made available to scholars who research America’s radical right. We look forward to learning from their scholarship.”
The collection will be made available to researchers after being prepared for use by the Rubenstein Library staff.
The SPLC Intelligence Project has been called “one of the most respected anti-terror organizations in the world” by National Review. It monitors hate groups and other extremists throughout the United States and exposes their activities to law enforcement agencies, the media and the public. The project posts its investigative findings online, on the Hatewatch blog and in the Intelligence Report, an award-winning quarterly journal. The Project has crippled some of the country’s most notorious hate groups by suing them for murders and other violent acts committed by their members.
Episode 5, which aired on April 28st, depicted the Mad Men characters reacting to the news that Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Across the board, everyone was upset and unnerved, but there was considerable awkwardness in their interactions with each other in the aftermath.Pete and Harry argued about what was an appropriate reaction to the death.Joan hugged Dawn. Don tried to send Dawn home, but she really wanted to stay at work. Megan took Sally and Gene to a vigil. Don took Bobby to the movies. Peggy fretted over an offer to purchase an apartment. Betty and Henry saw an opportunity for his political career to blossom. Ginsburg tried not to bungle a date that his father set up for him. There were references to wallpaper, formal wear, Milk Duds, Planet of the Apes, and Chinese food, among other items.Here are a selection of ads and images that refer to some of the products and cultural references mentioned in last night’s episode of Mad Men.We’ve even included a program from the April 4, 1968 ANDY Awards and some photos of a vigil that occurred on Duke’s campus in the days after the assassination. Paul Newman really was the keynote speaker! A gallery of our selected images may also be found on Pinterest and Flickr.
The Duke Vigil was a silent demonstration at Duke University, April 5 – 11, 1968, following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Up to 1,400 students slept on the Chapel Quad, food services and housekeeping employees went on strike, and most students boycotted the dining halls in support of the employees. Duke University Archives, University Archives Photograph Collection, box 54.Duke Vigil, April 5-11, 1968. Duke University Archives, University Archives Photograph Collection, box 54.
Oskar Morgenstern, n.d., from the Oskar Morgenstern Papers.
A project on the history of Mathematica Policy Research recently unearthed a historical treasure — a cache of personal papers, professional files, and correspondence by celebrated economist and mathematician Oskar Morgenstern, a founder of Mathematica. They will now join the existing collection of Morgenstern Papers in the Economists’ Papers Project at the Rubenstein Library.
The newly rediscovered papers are linked to Morgenstern’s longstanding connection to Mathematica. Along with several other Princeton University economists and mathematicians, Morgenstern founded Mathematica and served as chairman of its board. He maintained an office at the company’s Princeton headquarters until his death in 1977. “The materials, which we believe are from his Mathematica office, were recently discovered in our archives when we began compiling a history of the firm,” explained Paul Decker, president and CEO of Mathematica.
The additional papers comprise seventeen boxes of Morgenstern’s files and correspondence dating from 1940 through 1970. The discovery of these new materials serendipitously matched a period of research on Morgenstern’s travels and correspondence conducted by his daughter, Karin Papp, who assisted in transferring the files from Mathematica’s offices to the Rubenstein Library. The remainder of Morgenstern’s papers were donated to the Rubenstein Library by his widow Dorothy in the late 1980s. Among his many achievements, Morgenstern’s Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, co-authored with John von Neumann, is a pioneering work on game theory.
This addition fills an important gap in the Morgenstern Papers, and will be made available for research use after being prepared by our staff.
Post contributed by Will Hansen, Assistant Curator of Collections, adapted from a press release prepared by Mathematica Policy Research.
In this month’s Digitizing the Long Civil Rights Movement update, we are happy to announce that initial scanning for all of Duke’s manuscript content in the Content, Context, and Capacity Project is complete. Over 66,000 scans are now either published or are being processed to enable publication as soon as possible. We encourage you to check out the CCC Content Page as a portal for looking at all of Duke’s CCC Collections as well as those digitized by NC State, UNC-Chapel Hill, and NC Central. Meanwhile, we are beginning work on digitizing the audio oral histories from North Carolina found in the Behind the Veil Collection, which will be our primary focus during the upcoming third year of the grant.
For our collection highlight this month, we turn to the Charles N. Hunter Papers. Born to enslaved parents in Raleigh in 1851, Hunter would go on to become one of the most prominent African-American educators and advocates in North Carolina. Aside from industrial activism and prolific writings, Hunter served as a teacher and principal at several schools, mostly in the Triangle and its environs. As part of that work, he corresponded with the Tuskegee Institute and its founder, Booker T. Washington.
Letter, Booker T. Washington to Charles N. Hunter, July 7, 1914. Charles N. Hunter Papers, Box 2, Folder 2, Item ID: cnhms02002037. Click to enlarge.
The letter shown here is from Booker T. Washington to Charles N. Hunter. Written in 1914, it concerns a project, led by Hunter, concerned with building rural schools for African-Americans throughout the South. Hunter worked with Washington and the Tuskegee Institute for this project and continued to correspond with the institute after Washington’s death in November 1915. Given Hunter’s work with Washington, it is appropriate that the last school at which he served as a principal was Booker T. Washington School in Johnston County.
The Charles N. Hunter Papers, and other CCC Collections, will be published in the coming months.
The grant-funded CCC Project is designed to digitize selected manuscripts and photographs relating to the long civil rights movement. For more about Rubenstein Library materials being digitized through the CCC Project, check out previous progress updates posted here at The Devil’s Tale!
Post contributed by Josh Hager, CCC Project Graduate Assistant.
Administrative Professionals Day began as part of what was originally called “National Secretaries Week,” founded in 1952 by an organization now known as the International Association of Administrative Professionals, both to honor the work of secretaries and administrative professionals and attract people to the career.
When you think of a secretary in the 1950s, an image like this one, from the back of the Smith-Corona’s Complete Secretary’s Handbook (1951) probably comes to mind:
Our collection also contains this gem: Not Servants, Not Machines: Office Workers Speak Out by Jean Tepperman (1976). In the acknowledgements, Tepperman explains how women affiliated with the Boston chapter of “9 to 5,” an organization of women office workers, supported the writing of this book which includes interviews with women across the country. Like the “9 to 5” organization, this book aims to share these women’s experiences of discrimination in the workplace due sexism, and provide information about how to organize and improve women’s working conditions, treatment, and most importantly, their pay.
The Rubenstein Library salutes Administrative Professionals, especially our own Nelda Webb, and honors their contributions, as well as those who have worked to improve conditions and compensation for all women in the workplace.
Post contributed by Kelly Wooten, Research Services and Collection Development Librarian for the Bingham Center.
Episode 4, which aired on April 21st, featured a number of awkward moments for the characters of Mad Men. Several characters were pressured or had to do things that made them uncomfortable. Dawn was asked to clock out for Scarlett when she left early. Megan had to do her first love scene. She and Don were asked to participate in a foursome by Arlene and Mel. Peggy had to pitch a new ketchup campaign to Heinz after awkwardly running into Don and Stan at the Roosevelt Hotel. Later she and Ted have a drink at the same bar as the SCDP team. Joan had to tag along with her friend Kate when she wanted to have a fling with a younger man.
There were references to Avon, Birdseye, Dow Chemical, Joe Namath, and J. Walter Thompson, among other brands. And as usual there was lots of drinking. Here are a selection of ads that refer to some of the products and cultural references mentioned in last night’s episode of Mad Men. A gallery of our selected images may also be found on Pinterest and Flickr.
Post contributed by Mary Samouelian, Doris Duke Collection Archivist
Cecil Beaton’s portrait of Doris Duke
One of the most well-known photographs in the Doris Duke Photograph Collection is a very glamorous Doris Duke draped in a floral gown and pearls, standing against an ornate backdrop. The photograph was taken in the early 1930s by Cecil Beaton, a fashion photographer known primarily for his portraits of celebrated persons. For most people this image is Doris Duke.
Doris Duke’s class portrait, probably from kindergarten
However, the recently published Doris Duke Photograph Collection finding aid sets out to introduce you to a Doris Duke who is very different from her public persona. Approximately 3,500 photographs out of 12,000 photographs in the collection have been digitized and are viewable from within the finding aid. Amongst these digitized items you can scroll through images of Doris as a young girl, Doris’ volunteer work for the United States Government during World War II, images of her travel, various estates,and an assortment of pictures of her dogs, cats, cows, and camels!
If you are interested in seeing the actual photographs, you can hover the cursor over any of the images and information about the physical location of the photograph within the collection is displayed. You can then request the box(es) you are interested in using through Duke University’s library catalogue.
Hover over digitized photographs to find out which box it’s stored in
The finding aid also describes photographs that have not been digitized but are available for use in the Rubenstein Library. Some of the more fascinating images in the collection are tinted photographs of Duke Farms (Somerville, New Jersey) from the 1900s, autographed pictures of a sultry Rudolph Valentino (Doris’ school girl crush), and color glass mounted slides of Doris Duke’s trip to the Middle East in 1938.
Episode 3, shown on April 14th, showcased a couple of client meetings in the SCDP offices, along with some personal get-togethers outside the workplace.
Last night’s episode featured references to Jaguar, Heinz Ketchup, All laundry detergent, Teflon and Clearasil, Italian food, champagne, and the most mundane product of all: toilet paper. Enjoy our selection of highlighted ads, outdoor advertising designs, and advertising cookbooks that reflect the brands and themes that Mad Men characters interacted with last night. A gallery of our selected images may also be found on Pinterest and Flickr.
Anyone reading this blog knows that archives are full of wonderfully weird ephemera just waiting to be discovered and discussed, of conversations waiting to happen. This is the story of two archives that, it turns out, have a lot to talk about.
“Sunday evening in St. James’s, Barton,” from the John Rylands University Library
Ostensibly, this is a doodle, maybe an early comic. It depicts an ordinary meeting between preachers and parishioners. Only one thing stands out: the stocky girl just off the center dressed in bright pink and orange, while everyone around her wears drab brown. Look closer and you see that she her awkwardness is not limited to her dress: oblivious to the women gossiping behind her, our young heroine “stands, patiently, while her papa shakes hands with all the colliers, not knowing but she must do so too – a perfect pattern! Dear lady!” This oblivious fool is also the artist.
Cut to our own archive: Two summers ago, I was working in the Frank Baker Collection of Wesleyana and British Methodism when I came upon some poems. Having cataloged plenty of manuscript materials within the collection, I wouldn’t have thought much of them, except I noticed that they were tied together with string. Fanciful English student that I am, I recalled that Emily Dickinson’s manuscripts had been likewise fashioned together, and so began my grandiose visions: had I stumbled upon the British Emily? Could these poems help to reinvigorate the field of 18th-century women’s poetry – revolutionize it, even? It’s the fantasy held dear by every budding academic: to discover the next Milton or Frost, to shake the scholarly world to its core. Needless to say, literary scholarship remains unshaken, but it does have a new name on its register: Sarah Wesley.
The poems I found were written by our pink-and-orange artiste, the daughter of Charles Wesley, a co-founder of British Methodism. What is so fascinating about Sarah Wesley is her outright resistance to the restrictive practices of her every-day life – and how, perhaps as a result of that resistance, she has since all but disappeared from most histories of British Methodism.
Bound manuscript with Sarah Wesley’s writings in the Frank Baker Collection.
Her poetry in particular served as an outlet for questioning her father’s religion, as well as engaging with emergent conversations about the rights of women. Even while Wesley’s social commitments were progressive, she remained a devout Methodist throughout her life. But through her writing, most of which she kept hidden away from the judgmental eyes of her community, Wesley takes us to a place we don’t often think of when we read the eighteenth century: the private mind of the teenage girl.
Caitlin Flanagan’s recent book Girl Land (Little, Brown and Co., 2012) makes a compelling case for the fundamental significance of a particular marker of female adolescence: that time when a girl recedes into her room for a few years and emerges a brooding melodramatic for a few more. Flanagan posits that as a society, we take too lightly “a girl’s sudden need to withdraw from the world for a while and inhabit a secret emotional life” (1). But in fact, this is time and space that young girls need in order to come to terms with the world and their place within it. And so, Flanagan urges us to celebrate, rather than denigrate, the importance of this space she calls “girl land.”
Flanagan’s study is predicated on a particular reading of the history of the teenager. But even before “adolescence” became a discrete intellectual category in the twentieth century, Sarah Wesley was, in many ways, a typically modern teenage girl.
She wrote poetry that was evocative, romantic, and highly self-reflexive:
The Pilot Reason stays on Shore, The boisr’ous Passions more, Youth is the Ship and Hope the Oar, And O! the Sea is Love!
~from “Sonnet,” 1770
In particular, much of her work is preoccupied with exploring her budding sexuality:
Her Eyes enraptur’d shall your Beauties own Her snowy Fingers be your Virgin Lone! Her Lips shall bid Thee with a sigh Adieu! Her Lips shall greet Thee with ambrosial Dew! Descending showers shall fall from Heaven to gaze! Within your silken Folds shall Graces lie And panting Zephryss on your Bosom die! The Muse shall stamp Thee with Idalia’s Crest, And Venus court Thee to adorn her Breast.
~from “On receiving a Nosegay,” n.d.
However, she was not without some snark when it came to matters of romance:
Both Truth and Malice on one point agree That my outside is the worst part of me Small is the censure, whilst it stands confest Bad as it is, thy outside is the Best!
~“Epigram: on receiving a rude Speech from a Crooked Gentleman,” 1777
As we saw in the drawing from the Manchester archive, she held some anxiety over her appearance and the perceptions of others.
And in perhaps the defining feature of “girl land,” she was adamant about challenging the values she inherited from her family in order to come to her own understanding of her world (for more on the particulars of Wesley’s intellectual rebellion, see my essay in the Winter 2013 volume of Eighteenth-Century Studies, which expounds on her feminist and abolitionist interests).
“The Elopement” figures prominently in Koretsky’s article, “Sarah Wesley, British Methodism, and the Feminist Question, Again,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 46.2 (Winter 2013), pages 223-237.
So did my work in the Frank Baker Collection yield the next Emily Dickinson? Not exactly. At the level of versification, Wesley’s poetry is derivative at best. But in the connections she asks us to draw between religion and the secular discourses of the key social issues at the end of the eighteenth century, Wesley’s voice raises many productive questions, which I hope eighteenth-century scholars will continue to engage. And further still, the familiar tenor of her poetry demonstrates the persistence of “girl land,” and how productive that sometimes alien-seeming place can be.
Post contributed by Deanna Koretsky, a Ph.D. candidate in the Duke English Dept. and a graduate student assistant in Technical Services.
Dispatches from the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University
Our collection also contains this gem: 
